


Oasis

by Ladycat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Africa, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They called her Isis. It wasn’t her real name, of course. They didn’t know what that was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oasis

They called her Isis. It wasn’t her real name, of course. They didn’t know what that was. Several of the girls had indicated that calling her that was insulting to them, and her, on a variety of levels pale, stupid white men could never comprehend. But the name stuck, somehow, and now only the most prickly rolled their eyes when she was referred to.

Spike closed the door to her tiny bedroom, glaring at the gaggle of watching eyes that peered around the corner. “Leave her be.”

“But what if we want our clothes?” one of them asked. Spike didn’t bother trying to figure out which girl it was, hackles already rising at the tone of her voice. Putting a name to her now would only make problems later. Spike didn’t forget as easily as he had, once, and forgiveness always came with a price. “And where are we to sleep! There are four beds in there, you know. Three of us you just locked out.”

“Leave. Her. Be.” Spike didn’t raise his voice, learning months ago that it only provided them with fodder. Burning passion called to passion, after all, Spike didn’t want the screaming match the girl— _don’t look, don’t see who it is, don’t recognize her voice, just don’t_ —obviously wanted. “Now.”

Two pairs of eyes instantly disappeared, followed by a short, whispered conversation as the ringleader chastised the presumed desertion. “No,” a different girl said, voice rising up, sharp and sudden. “You are wrong.”

Strange how they didn’t use contractions here. Or perhaps not, given few of had known English before coming to the compound, and fewer still spoke it with any kind of fluency. Their English coach, a tiny Japanese women who had been a teacher before the magic woke in her blood, described it as constantly translating in her head, even after so many years. It was why her—and their—reading comprehension remained low no matter how accentless she drove herself to speak.

“But she—”

“No. You have not killed yet, you do not understand.”

“I _have_ killed. I kill monsters, creatures that would do me harm. They deserve death!”

The second girl sighed, the ache in her words so much older than the timbre of her voice. “They are never _just_ monsters. Especially not for Isis.”

The first girl inhaled deeply, fully intending to start the shouting match she’d been gearing for since the first moment, then _oophed_ as breath left her abruptly. Eyes half closed to prevent seeing her face, Spike ignored the way her scent tickled his skin, the heat of her familiar and known. He would not judge. He _would_ shake the girl until she went utterly silent and still in his grasp, sullen in her submission. “Practice yards,” he ordered, the diamond edge of his words causing the other girls to flinch and cower. Spike’s temper was different now, but no less terrible. “Now. All of you. And you don’t come back until your dripping with sweat, get me?”

All four girls chorused their agreement, breathing fast as they scurried from the room. One of them rubbed her neck as she went, shooting glances over her shoulder, as if the power of her gaze could do something to him. Spike ignored her, rubbing his brown until the ridges faded back to smooth skin. These girls did not fear vampires, anymore, their training had seen to that. They did fear him, however. Him who cuddled them when they cried, cut off from all the had ever known, and drilled them in methods to fight his kind.

Him, who never lost. Not ever. Not even to the Slayer herself.

Spike cultivated that fear shamelessly.

“Hey.” Fingers thick with calluses curled around his shoulders, pulling him back against a chest that gave off warmth the African sun could never match. Spike’s body installed synced to the rhythm of the heartbeat pressed against his back, tension finally beginning to release. “How is she?”

“Broken, I think. She killed ’em all, Xan. Tore them to pieces.”

A chin seated itself on his shoulder, the sharp point of it immaterial against the comforting pressure. Arms settled around his waist, blanketing him securely. “Should we send her to Dana?”

“Think so.”

They stood there quietly for a moment, listening to the gentle thump and rush of Xander’s body, louder than the chatter and cries from the salle down the end of the hallway where four girls worked themselves in penance for their sins.

“You didn’t have to do this, Spike.” Gentle words, gentler breath against the skin of his neck, the humidity making tiny hairs rise in appreciation. “I would have gone.”

He wanted to snort. There should be a cutting remark, here, one that wounded as well as turning the conversation away from something so painful. Instead Spike felt himself turn around, body molding to Xander’s as easily as a child’s, arms wrapping around a neck and shoulder that remained perfectly still under the touch. Expected, then. Spike hated that he was so predictable. “No,” he said to Xander’s chest. “No, I didn’t want you to. To see—”

One arm remained locked around his waist, an anchor, the other curled around his back, the hand busily tracing patterns over hair and neck and shoulders. “Spike, it doesn’t hurt me the way it hurts you.”

“It was a massacre,” Spike told him, visions dancing behind his eyes. “She killed them all. Probably didn’t give them enough time to know what was coming or that they should run, if they were able. God, the bodies... ”

Xander sighed, ruffling Spike’s hair and making his scalp tingle. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t speaking of Isis and her impending breakdown.

“She’ll need us,” Spike continued. His throat was tight, voice rasping and nearly inaudible. The stink of pavement, rotting garbage and broken flesh, was so strong it almost obliterated the scent of clean, strong man. Bright lights, suspended well above, darkened the shadows in Spike’s mind and he wished he could cry out, could cower away from it and hide the way Isis had tried. “She’ll needs us desperately now.”

Xander’s arms tightened, cool, wet lips pressing to ear, his cheek, whatever bits of him not hidden by the curve of chest and shoulder. “Then we’ll be here. When she wakes up... ” Spike was pushed out from the shelter he craved, grasping blindly as he was pressed against a wall, his chin tilted up so his eyes met brown. “She won’t wake for hours, though, right? You dosed her?”

“I—yes, but—”

“And Akiko can stay with the girls.” The finality of the statement meant that Xander had already double checked, his management skills effortlessly arranging their little world so that Spike could only nod, accepting. Each of them had their castles to rule, and this was unequivocally Xander’s. “And let us know if Isis wakes up. And call Dana to arrange for transportation.”

Spike nodded again. “And in the meantime?”

Xander’s eye was dark, almost as dark as Isis’, full of the same shadows and broken, crumbling bits. But it sparkled in the hall light, smiling down at him as Xander’s lips did something else entirely. When Xander finally pulled back, smiling for true, now, he said, “In the meantime, I think you need to be fucked until you forget, for a little. And then sleep. Well, first there’ll be tea with Willow’s potion in it. Then there’ll be sleep.”

Tension Spike hadn’t been aware of left so abruptly that only Xander’s hold kept him upright. “And then?”

“I’ll do what I can for Isis. Until you’re awake, and better, and you can do what you can for Isis. We’ll patch each other back up when Dana comes.”

Sighing, Spike rested his cheek against Xander’s shoulder. If any of the girls saw him, they’d laugh and call them soppy names, but there would be jealousy in their eyes. All of them knew about the Watcher and the Vampire. They told love stories to each other at night, snug in their beds, gossiping about them and other things before sleep claimed them. They sighed at the way Xander would look at him, sometimes, and always noted Spike touching Xander before Spike himself managed to.

They didn’t know about broken bodies and shattered souls, patched together with words and tentative fingers. They weren’t supposed to, really, flush with romantic notions that all young girls loved. Even the ones hardened by circumstance not of their own making, past hurts and rages leaving them almost as damaged as the two who cared for them. It was the province of women to love for loves sake—and that was probably why they remained there, helping whenever they could, instead of escaping to the cushier life under England’s thickened skies.

“I love you.” It didn’t fix anything. No edges met and fused together, no dings smoothed out. But it filled something rotten and hollow inside Spike’s body until he forgot anything but the man who let him cling so tightly.

Spike thought about asking if this was worth it. If they should stay here, where everything was too bright and too hot and too hard. Running away was something Spike had excelled at for a hundred years, and he could feel the need for it beating charred wings against his belly. To take Xander and run where it was cool and dim, where they had nothing to worry about except what Xander wanted to eat for dinner and maybe if they should catch a movie sometime later that week.

And then he remembered the little girl, so fragile despite the blood staining her skin, leaning against him as they walked back to the compound. He remembered the way she turned to him, glassy eyes filled with an emotion Spike never put name to, no matter how many times he saw it. _“Is it over?” she had asked, soft and tentative._

_“It’s never over,” he’d begun, but she waved him off._

_“No. The book, that is never finished. But this chapter? This part is done?”_

_“Yes, cherie. This part is done.”_

_“And I can see my mother? I can tell her that she—that she is safe now?”_

_Spike remembered thinking about that, wondering how to explain that no one was every truly safe. There was always something darker and meaner waiting on the horizon, laughing every time an unknowing glance trailed over it. And then he looked into her eyes, and saw the dawning hope. Not for for ever, the way some of the younger girls still spoken of. But for now. For this one moment, against this one specific thing, was it safe?_

_“Yes,” he had promised._

Spike shook off the memory slowly, looking up into the single eye before him. That chapter was over, Spike realized, certain as only a lover could be that Xander had ceased second guessing his lack of two eyes and simply lived with it as if it had always been. And for the moment, for that specific thing, it was safe. Safely dealt with.

“I love you,” Spike whispered.

Xander smiled and kissed him again, drawing him step by careful step back to the haven they’d created. Blues and greens, shimmering with an oceans grace, filled a room dotted with cushions and the softest of materials. Nothing harsh or loud was allowed in this room, no hard angles or rough textures. This was home, Spike thought, as he always did when crossing the threshold. This was the peace he’d craved for decades, brought about because of the shivering, trembling creatures they’d been when they first came to stay here, long before the girls started arriving. This was safe. 

This was worth anything.

Later, when Xander fetched him a cup of tea dosed with Willow’s dreamless sleep, Spike curled his fingers around a naked thigh, tugging Xander closer to him, body fitting easily against his. “Isis. Her mum. Can we bring her here? I know we’re not—”

Xander’s smile was slow and suffused with love, his fingers gentle as they stilled Spike’s lips. “I called her the moment you two came home.”

Oh. Right then. Spike lifted a head suddenly far too heavy and full, brushing his mouth against Xander’s, before dropping down and into blackness that swallowed him with a lover’s touch. A Xander’s touch, full of peace and welcome and want without any edges or catches to be found.


End file.
